They're a very good side, especially with Fergus O'Neill in there who seems to be taking wickets every time he plays (and can bat a bit). I'd be happy with a draw.

Jude Bellingham has bought a stake in Birmingham Phoenix

https://www.espncricinfo.com/story/jude-bellingham-buys-minority-stake-in-birmingham-phoenix-1533043

Got there in the end! It seems all our victories the last couple of seasons are very tight games.

It's a great knack to have to win the close games but it would also be nice to get a convincing win on the cards.

Huge wicket to get Benkenstein! We have to close this out from here now.

The recovery last week came from Woakes and Smith. Neither are playing today!

Whilst Essex have bowled well and the conditions are tricky we have failed to punish a lot of the bad balls. We seem to finding fielders every time and that adds pressure.

paulbear wrote:

It looks like I did the right thing by not going, bad weather or not.

My thoughts exactly. Will need an improvement in both weather and performance for me to go to the latter days.

Barker back bowling in the second innings, which is good news.

I would bring Malik in on Friday - he's got a bit of a swagger about him and if he's in the runs you would assume he's confident.

Agreed he had enough chances here and each time it was sold as we would have him for longer than we did. Sod's law would suggest he'll play a full campaign for them but in reality I expect he won't.

I can only echo what's been said already. This will be a really poor defeat, and worrying for the rest of the campaign.

The same old problems of not being able to bowl teams out after removing the top order. We won't win many games until that's sorted.

You would've hoped with the return of Welch those problems would be fixed somewhat - maybe he just needs a bit longer.

Very strange passage of play from Booth. Surely the right approach was to try and move the game forward rather than block it out when there was a new ball coming anyway. The worst case scenario would've been to be all out at the end of the day with Sussex starting a fresh tomorrow.

Added to that kept Thompson off strike for so long that his timing was gone by the time he was back on strike.

We were the only team in Div 1 to elect to bat

Very pleasing day and let's hope that now Dan has finally got his first championship hundred he can really kick on this season.

On comms they mentioned that we thought it would be best for batting on day 2 (i'm not sure why) but let's hope that's the case as it will need to be much trickier than today if we're to get another 10 Surrey wickets.

Debating whether to brave the weather tomorrow...

Nice to hear Dermot Reeve back on commentary this year

Surrey do bat deeper than most but this is the same issue we had last season, get through the top/upper middle order quite cheaply and then fail to wrap up the rest of the wickets.

Yep, the media do seem to think we've got a shot at the title.

But I don't think we have enough runs in the team. Hain and Barnard have done too much of the heavy lifting for a while so the rest of the top order need to fire and it doesn't get much tougher than Surrey in April in overcast conditions.

Will we try and prepare a flat one a la last season to go for a draw or more confidence this time round to get a win?

He's signed to "build bridges with the community"

Yes huge congratulations. In my mind it still makes sense for him to play the odd CC game but I think it'll be IPL straight into the home test series in summer.

Seems like Pope has run his race, meaning the number 3 spot is wide open for Bethell in the test team

PCA not ruling out strike action after county vote

Professional Cricketers' Association chief executive Daryl Mitchell has not ruled out the possibility of players taking strike action after proposals to reform the County Championship were rejected.

Full story here: https://www.bbc.com/sport/cricket/articles/c4g961134g2o